FISHERIES OCEANOGRAPHY Fish. Oceanogr. 4:2, 191-192, 1995

Book Review

Scaling Fisheries: the science of measuring the effects of fishing, 1855-1955 By Tim D. Smith

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 1994. 392 pp.

This book starts by posing the question asked of George Sars in 1864 which was to determine why cod catches fluctuated in northern Norway. The book ends by saying that the basic structure of fishery research is unlikely to allow a research programme to be carried out on the scale necessary to answer the original question put to Sars. In between these two comments the author documents 100 years of research wrangling among fisheries biologists, much of which is anecdotally enter- taining. The book is in fact as much about people as it is about science, and the author provides a separate index of all the scientists mentioned.

On the scientific side, the author starts by identifying four principal causes of fluctuations in fisheries: namely migration, predation, pollution, and overfishing. Through various historical accounts of the science, he then summarizes three theories on fish population dynamics that deal primarily with the overfishing hypothesis of population fluctuation. He describes the theories as the Schaefer surplus production theory, Ricker’s spawner recruit theory, and Beverton and Holt’s yield per recruit theory. From a practical view of management, the author documents scientific committee meetings that were held to discuss the application of these theories (or their subsets in time). The invariable outcome of these meetings, whether the subject was whales or sardines, ended after a protracted period with management avoiding any substantial research programme. Fishing and discussions continued in tandem; eventually the resource would virtually disappear and the committee would be disbanded. The lack of success in bringing any science to bear upon the conservation of stocks is generally attributed to the overriding interests of commercial companies in the exploitation of the fisheries resources, coupled with the political and economic interests of governments in giving unscientific advice to appease the financial needs of the companies and of the fishermen. In fairness to the greed of the exploiters, however, the author concludes by pointing out that at the end of his historical period in 1955, there was still no conclusive scientific basis

ISBN 0-521-39032-X. 250.00 (hc).

0 1995 Blackwell Science Ltd.

available for the management of fisheries. To reverse this conclusion, is it surprising that fisheries have been mismanaged, even into the 1990s with the example of the loss of Canadian cod stocks, when the science is such a poor predictor of stocks?

In the Introduction, the author acknowledges that his examples of fisheries and fisheries science are geographically limited to the West. This is a pity because one of the best examples of collapse of an unmechanized fishery was the disappearance of the Hokkaido herring. This fishery amounted to about a million tons in 1897, but declined to nothing in the 1950s after a drastic change in the marine climate. Thirty years later a small spawning stock reappeared on the coast of Hokkaido, and Kobayashi (1994) notes that this event was synchronous with the reappearance of spawning Atlantic herring on Georges Bank. This brings us to a rather brief, but enlightened portion of the text in which the author gives an account of Burkenroad’s objections to Herrington’s ideas on stock and recruitment. In 1948, Burkenroad had the audacity to suggest that perhaps it was environmental conditions that affected recruitment. It is claimed in the text that his views were blunted, however, by the opinions of Beverton and Holt (1957) who regarded favourable changes in stock following fisheries limitation as being evidence of success and an unlikely coincidence with natural change. It is interesting that today we are asked to think about much more unlikely coincidences in terms of teleconnected events, such as one posed by Kobayashi above.

Throughout this book it appears that fisheries scientists have been groping for more than a century for answers to problems that are totally unanswerable without a proper data set on the environment. Fisheries science as portrayed by Tim Smith is akin to medicine in the 1930s, when physicians were known to “practice” on a “patient” who in turn largely had to wait to get better or die. Medical science without the analytical tools of enzyme chemistry, immunology, genetics and antibiotics is fisheries science in the second half of our century without a broad spectrum of oceanographic knowledge. The first scientists to formalize this belief were the Japanese, but the author makes only one reference that 1 can find to a Japanese scientist and that is to Professor Uda, who incidentally founded the Japanese Society of Fisheries Oceanography in 1944.

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192 Book Review

In summary, in spite of not having international breadth in his examples of fisheries science, 1855 to 1955, the author has done an excellent job in delving into many intricate and obscure discussions to bring us a meaningful and objective historical account of some aspects of fisheries science. I especially recommend that the book should be used, in part, for all introductory courses in fisheries science.

REFERENCES

Eherttin, R J H dnd Holt, S J (1957) On the Dynamics of

Exploited Fish Population. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (UK), Fisheries Investigations (Series 2) , 19, 533 PP.

Kobayashi, T. (1994) Long-term fluctuation of herring populations distributed around northern Japan and discussion of the relationship to the marine environment. (Abstract) North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES) 3rd Annual Meeting, Nemuro, Japan, p. 23.

TIM PARSONS Department of Oceanography University of British Columbia Vancouver, B.C., Canada

0 1995 Blackwell Science Ltd., Fish. Oceunogr., 4, 191-192.